Tomorrow can be a tricky thing.Tomorrow can be hopeful. After all, Little Orphan Annie promises that the sun will come out.Tomorrow can be trifling and maybe even a bit bothersome. Fiddle-dee-dee. I'll just think about that later!Tomorrow can also be quite sinister – depending upon who it belongs to! In the Broadway hit “Caberet,” tomorrow belongs to the Nazis, and they sing about it in the hauntingly beautiful “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

In the early 1860s, just before national events led to civil war, Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed at her request) wrote about such an ominous time, when all of the nation’s tomorrows promised to be bleak. His poem, “A struggle comes tomorrow” (below on the left) conveyed a sense of doom. His poem also inspired third cousin Emily to pen her poem “As subtle as tomorrow” (below on the right).

Emmett Lee Dickinson’s poem seems to be quite prophetic now that the 2016 presidential election is over. Already there is civil unrest in response to the election of Donald Trump, and gloom and doom was, in fact, foretold (one example, a fictional Boston Globe printed last April, is pictured at the right).​